Financial Capability In Youth Workforce Programs Report

During summer 2016 Alameda County Community Asset Network, AC CAN, surveyed 33 youth workforce programs about their use of financial education and financial products. AC CAN found that workforce programs are eager to provide financial education to youth, and most have already started to do so. Many programs want to provide education on additional topics, but need more support to do so.

The majority of programs use their own staff to teach financial education and get their materials from a variety of sources including developing them internally, from other programs, online and computer programs, or a mixture of all three. Programs identified lack of content knowledge as the most common barrier to providing education.

Some of the programs already connect youth to financial products but there are still many barriers for youth to open accounts. The main ones are access barriers (no government ID, unable to get an account in their own name, no financial institutions in neighborhoods) and experience barriers (negative experiences of family and community, not feeling welcome or comfortable in financial institutions).